Looking White People in the Eye

Razack, Shrene. (1998). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Razack criticizes that postcolonial discourse of cultural difference makes power relations invisible and keeps dominant cultural norms, white supremacy, in place by culturalizing social domination, in other words, replacing the domination of race, gender, and class with the language of culture. Thus, in the case of sexual violence involving Aboriginal women and immigrant women, both victims and attackers are often “culturalized, that is, understood as cultural and frozen in time, rather than as dynamic, historical, and social” (p. 19). Looking at sexual violence and the process of refugee determination, Razack asserts that women’s realities should be understood within the structures of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy.

Chapter 3. What is to Be Gained by Looking White People in the Eye? Race in Sexual Violence Cases

Razack states that culture talk is a double-edged sword, as “it packages difference as inferiority and obscures both gender-based and racial domination, yet cultural considerations are important for contexualizing oppressed groups’ claims for justice, for improving their access to services, and for requiring dominant groups to examine the invisible cultural advantages they enjoy” (p. 58).

Problems, however, arise from the fact is culture is often uttered as an unchangeable set of values and customs autonomous from historical and social contexts. Razack writes, “culture is taken to mean values, beliefs, knowledge, and customs that exist in a timeless and unchangeable vacuum outside of patriarchy, racism, imperialism, and colonialism” (p. 58). Thus she calls attention to sexism interlocked with racism.

Razack contests that white society preempts racism and sexism by replacing the discoursesof racism and sexism with culture. Calling this process culturalization, Razack states:

In its modern form, overt racism, which rests on the notion of biologically based inferiority, coexists with a more covert practice of domination encoded in the assumption of cultural or acquired inferiority. This ‘culturalization of racism,’ whereby Black inferiority is attributed to ‘cultural deficiency, social inadequacy, and technological underdevelopment,’ thrives in a social climate that is officially pluralist. (p. 60)

Razack also points out the culturalization of sexism, writing that cultural consideration are used to defend male sexual violence offenders while also being used to intensify prejudices against minority, in particular Aboriginal, women. In this regard, Razack pays attention to the tendency that women of color distance themselves from the culturalization of violence, as seen in the statement, ‘No culture condones violence’ included in the report of the Coalition of Immigrant and Visible Minority Women of British Colombia.

Observing cross-cultural sensitivity training, Razack contests that such training is of little use unless it is pursued in the context of the greater empowerment of the subordinate group.

Chapter 4. Policing the Borders of Nation: The Imperial Gaze in Gender Persecution Cases (88-129)

Razack states that the guideline released by the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board in 1993 that recognized domestic violence as a form of persecution and legalized petitions of asylum based on gender-related persecution is one of the most remarkable achievement in Canadian legal history and the first guideline in the world to address gender-related persecution.

As Razack argues, a problem with this asylum structure, , is sexism interlocked with colonialsim, that is, the West "knows what is best for the Other" (p. 92). Thus Razack argues that refugees are viewed to the West as a mess that the Third World created and that the West must clean up. Women seeking asylum are seen also within this context. Razack states:

The successful asylum seeker must cast herself as c cultural Other, that is, as someone fleeing from a more primitive culture. That is to say, it is through various orientalist and imperialist lenses that women's gender-based persecution becomes visible in the West. Without the imperial or colonial component, claims of gender persecution are less likely to succeed and asylum is denied. (pp. 92-93)

Concerning violence

Frantz Fanon. (1968). In The Wretched of the Earth (pp. 35-106). New York: Grove Press.

Fanon radically cries out for decolonization from the bottom up by criticizing colonial intellectuals and nationalist leaders on the ground that decolonization is the veritable creation of new men and is obtained only through violence.

"The naked truth of decolonization evokes for us the searing bullets and bloodstained knives which emanate from it" (p.37).

The colonized intellectuals, Fanon stresses, do not carry revolutionary actions because they are lack of "concrete conflicts" in which the people are engaged with (p.47). They are ingrained with the Western essentials, such as individualism, that colonialist bourgeois brought in. Related to this issue, Fanon points out that decolonization does occur in areas where movements for liberation are not mature yet smart intellectuals are found. These intellectuals demand a drive for nationalism. Fanon write they behave like an opportunist in this phase.

"They are insistent in their demands for the nationalization of commerce, that is to say the reservation of markets and advantageous bargains for nationals only. As far as doctrine is concerned, they proclaim the pressing necessity of naitonalizing the robberty of the nation" (p.48).

In reading the agressiveness against their own people of the colonized, Fanon finds a seed for motion grounded in their certain emotion.

"[The native] is always overpowered but not tamed; he is treated as an inferior but he is not convinced of his inferiority. He is patiently waiting until the settler is off his guard to fly at him. The native's muscles are always tensed...[W]e know that in certain emotional conditions the presence of an obstacle accentuates the tendency toward motion" (p. 53).

Fanon criticizes the ambiguity that the colonial elites have in term of violence by saying they are violent only in their words.

"The native intellectuals have clothed his aggressiveness in his barely veiled desire to assimilate himself to the colonial world. He has used his affressiveness to serve his own inividual interests" (p. 60).

Observing the colonies' transformation from a source of raw materials to a market, Fanon asserts elevated elegance and lessened bloodthristy as a trend of today's wars of repression and examines relaxation of violence driven by the political leaders in colonial countries. They are progressive yet authorative and do not allow explosion of tension, which stem from the native's realization that nothing changed in spite of the nation's independence.

"In their speeches the political leaders give a name to the nation. In this way the native's demands are given shape... They avoid the actual overthrowing of the state, but in fact they introduce into their readers' or hearers' consciousness the terrible ferment of subversion" (p. 68).

"[A]ll parties are aware of the power of such violence and that the question is not always to reply to it by a greater violence, but rather to see how to relax the tension" (p. 73).

The influx of capitalism caters to this peaceful violence/co-existence. However, Fanon puts an emphasis on the single combat between the settler and the native, an armed and open struggle. This violence against the native in turn binds them together.

"The appearance of the settler has meant in the terms of syncretism the death of the aboriginal society, cultural lethargy and th petrification of indivisuals. For the native, life can only sprin gup again out of the rotting corpse of the settler" (p.93)

"Their destruction is the preliminary to the unification of the people. At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction...Yesterday they were completely irresponsible; today they mean to understand everything and make all decision. Illuminated by violence, the consciousness of the people rebels against any pacitication." (pp. 94).

[His insinuated perspective about violence turning to political power needs more explanation. Otherwise it remains as a fantasy. Related to this, Chambers also asserts bottom-up decision making based on self-organization.]

Regarding the nationalist movements, Fanon argues that one common discourse against decolonization is that independence will bring socio-economic regression, thus demanded independence deserves poverty; in this given situation, certain nationalist leaders ask for enourmous efforts from their peple while others opt for economic dependency voluntarily.

Lastly, he regards the decolonization movement as the rehabilitation of mankind and the victory of man everywhere once and for all.